Janeparent

I agree that more than all that would be extremely difficult. My personal opinion is that it would be better to take the Trinity Diploma out of the equation, and instead offer three A’ levels alongside the full time ballet training.

I don’t think it’s a free choice from those either, unless things have changed: my understanding was that it used to be either English and art or maths and biology (which seems to have been changed now to geography).

Elmhurst only offer two A’ levels (from a very limited choice of subjects) which, as has been pointed out, isn’t usually enough for university entry. The only place which offers three, with a good range of subject options, is Tring.

I’m very glad she has mellowed.

See my post above! Clearly different experiences of KS!

I totally agree with both of these points. Our daughter received far better pastoral care from some lovely academic staff than from the “pastoral staff”.

Not all of them have moved on. The problem is that however good the official policies are, however well-intentioned the principal is (and she is, at Elmhurst, in my opinion, based on our experience), if the day to day ballet teaching is not monitored or corrected then the actual implementation of any policies is left completely to chance, dependent on the whims of individual teachers.

Just to give a possible warning: I know nothing of the current school, but my personal memory of being taught by this school’s principal, 40 years ago, is not a positive one. Perhaps she has mellowed over the years… Mods: please remove if this breaks the rules.

For any parents of younger children making this decision, our personal (recent) experience was this: our daughter started at Elmhurst in year 7, was desperately unhappy and left halfway through year 8. While the academic staff were kind, her ballet teacher was not: in that short space of time she lost all of her belief in her ability and all of her joy in dance. She was broken and now recoils at the very mention of ballet. Having spent her younger childhood loving ballet and being devoted to it, and showing a large amount of talent and potential, she will now never dance again. The pastoral care she received at the school was laughable: we moved house so that she could be a day student, but the “pastoral” staff are in reality simply the boarding staff, who consider day students to be an inconvenience. She was lonely and neglected. We had many meetings with senior management, at which assurances were made, but nothing substantially changed. I wish with all my heart that we had never sent her there.

Even if the parents decide to remove their child from a school (which we did from Elmhurst) the damage that has already been done can be huge and long-lasting or permanent.

Our experience/impression was that the training at Elmhurst was very far from superb: our child did not make progress in line with their potential before joining the school. Our impression was that the students who made the most progress were those who (against the rules) also had private training outside of the school. I think this is not limited to Elmhurst though and happens at all the vocational schools, as far as I am aware.

This latter point is true to an extent, although the schools can give a misleading impression at open days and during the audition process: we chose Elmhurst precisely because it seemed the most kind and caring, but unfortunately the good intentions of both the principal and the artistic director, which I think are genuine, did not carry over into the running of the dance department, in our experience.

I realise that each child’s experience will be different, and equally valid, but just to share my own child’s experience of Elmhurst and give a different perspective, we did not find the training, the nurturing ethos or the communication with parents to be excellent at all - this applied particularly to the dance department; the academic staff were, in our experience, generally kinder and better at keeping parents informed about our child’s progress. Our child did well academically but was otherwise very unhappy and left during Year 8. They were selected with a few others from Year 7 to appear in BRB’s Cinderella, but I agree that generally the professional performance opportunities (for lower school students) are very limited.

We didn’t ask for that but they are very accommodating so it would definitely be worth asking. They have only been going for a couple of years but are expanding rapidly (and have won some awards). When we were looking it was the closest we could find online to a “real” school and so far we haven’t been disappointed.

Just to add, MVA is run like an online version of a regular school - so they have small class sizes, a head teacher and head of year, whole year and year group assemblies, optional social rooms, clubs (art etc.), a personal “mentor”, regular reports. We have been very impressed so far (child started last September).